Risen 2 - First Reviews

April 23rd, 2012, 14:24

The first Risen 2 reviews have been spotted by our forum members, along with a couple via Google for good measure. The early results are mixed, with IGN finding the game "watered down", while others think Risen 2 is quite difficult.
From IGN, with a score of 6.5/10:

Following the overly ambitious and buggy mess that was Gothic 3 in 2006, Piranha Bytes and the Gothic franchise split ways. For its next project under publisher Deep Silver, Piranha Bytes created a new fiction in Risen, retaining many of the elements that made Gothic great: open-world freedom, rewarding exploration and a gritty, believable world. Though flawed, Risen represented a distilled version of the Gothic formula – a smaller chunk of explorable terrain with more focused objectives and slightly less punishing combat. Piranha Bytes continues the trend of making its signature style of role-playing more digestible in Risen 2: Dark Waters, though in the process thins out too much of the series' fascinating density.

Risen 2: Dark Waters is a difficult game to review, because I want to express how much I enjoyed myself in spite of the mountains of criticism that it quite rightly deserves. It's unnecessarily mean-spirited, it demands an immense amount of the player's time before it hits its stride, and the whole thing's potentially offensive to boot. All that said, when it finally opens up and lets the player have fun, Risen 2 has hours upon hours of legitimately enjoyable gameplay on offer. The frustration of getting trapped in the corner by a faster opponent never lets up, but once players get strong enough to soak it up and hit back, the feeling of relief and vindication is remarkable. All told, you'll get over thirty hours of pirate-flavored silliness that will brutalize you, then make you feel good inside.

For me Risen 2: Dark Waters was a nice change of pace from the fantasy or space RPGs we generally see. Playing as a pirate was a blast. The game’s RPG mechanics like the quests were fairly traditional to the genre, but at least it does not take away from the game. The one thing I did get frustrated with at times was the game’s pacing. It was slow. You start off with only the ability to do a simple attack with your sword. As you earn experience you can then trade that experience in to upgrade your different attribute categories of sword fighting, bugs, toughness, thievery and magic. However, upgrading these areas does not immediately grant you the new abilities associated with that level. Once you rank up the level you need to then talk to someone who will train you on the abilities related to that level. A few times someone will train you on a specific area for free if you help them but most of the time you have to pay gold to be trained. I found this frustrating as I was constantly short on gold. I never had enough to train my character in all the abilities that I had access to for my level and buy the best equipment. Even simple tasks like sneaking, you have to pay someone to train you. The more advance the task the more you have to pay. Early on I invested in the sneak, lock pick and pick pocket abilities so I could have more money. This did help some as I stole pretty much everything I could get my hands on in the game and then sold it. But, this dual process made the progressions too slow for my liking. It would make more sense to be able to unlock new abilities by either upgrading or paying someone to train you to do them, not both. The one benefit of this dual unlock requirement was that I did a majority of the side quests in the game for the extra gold. This really helped fill in the story and game world for me.

I did, however, enjoy exploring the islands in Dark Waters. Since there is no mini map or waypoints, and most quests aren’t marked on your map you’re left following verbal direction from quest givers or simply exploring the jungle on your own. I found this gave a real sense of accomplishment when you found something interesting or completed a quest. Dark Waters may not grab you right away, but it is one of those games that will find you looking at the clock and realizing that it’s suddenly four hours later.

Originally Posted by Alistair
It is quite good that the reviews are coming out while we're still in the pre-order period. Seems pretty honest.

Weell its too late for some of us (got it from GMG for 36 euros)

That said even If it is as bad as the IGN review makes it sound (and really the points of criticism seem realistic and fair to me and hit upon critical features that were very important to my enjoyment of the series), I'll chalk it up to PB cashing in the goodwill created by its track record for me.

This would be the last time though
…But let's wait until we get the final product on our hands…

Originally Posted by Alistair
So far it sounds… ok. Not great. It can be had for $40 in the US (from GMG) which makes it justifiable to me. I know in the UK it's very expensive and I'd be tempted to wait a while in that case.

Do any reviews mention the Treasure Isle DLC? I didn't see it anywhere.

It is quite good that the reviews are coming out while we're still in the pre-order period. Seems pretty honest.

I would like to know about this as well. I love open world games and there are so few out there, so I will def play this, but Its sadd that over and over again PB games have the same issues(even though they always talk about fixing them).

Originally Posted by JonNik
Weell its too late for some of us (got it from GMG for 36 euros)

That said even If it is as bad as the IGN review makes it sound (and really the points of criticism seem realistic and fair to me and hit upon critical features that were very important to my enjoyment of the series), I'll chalk it up to PB cashing in the goodwill created by its track record for me.

This would be the last time though
…But let's wait until we get the final product on our hands…

It does sound like it's a chopped up product (30 hours!), that has gone in a different direction to what the fans of the series want. I really don't like what I've read about it so far, though I'm always adverse to change

Some mixed opinions it seems, IGN says it's small and unrewarding for exploration, while another review says it opens up and begins rewarding exploration as you go along. Some criticisms are the same we've heard throughout the years, others seem justified (shorter game length etcetera). Risen wasn't the longest game ever either…

I'm still not sure about this (even though I've got it preordered) but to be honest most of the negative comments in these reviews are positives for me.

In my opinion its a good thing that the economy isn't completely broken like it is in 99% of other RPGs where you basically get to a point half way through the game where money becomes meaningless. And the fact that its pretty hard at the beginning is also a good thing. i want my character to feel more powerful as I progress through the game.

The only problems I agree with are the length (30 hours is a very short for a £40 game) and the fact that the rpg mechanics have been simplified

The first Risen will probably keep me from touching the sequel. It had some strengths, but wasn't much of an "Open World". Gothic 3 was better. Of course I've found the combat systems from all of the Gothics and Risen to be just barely playable, but I know there are plenty here who disagree.

When reviews complain about slowness and plodding pacing, that's usually a good sign for me that I'll like it. But when I read a review that complains about having to pay for a trainer in order to upgrade skills (VGrevolution) it does make me wonder how many actual RPG's some of these reviewers have actually played.

Still, some other criticisms to take note of. Shall be interesting reading a few more as they come in, especially one from a PB fan that actually knows their games.

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
But when I read a review that complains about having to pay for a trainer in order to upgrade skills (VGrevolution) it does make me wonder how many actual RPG's some of these reviewers have actually played.

I've played tons of them and still don't like it, neither in The Bard's Tale nor in Risen.

It only leads to stupid grinding.

— blackcanopus:

Steam is out of question. It's not convenient, it's not easy to use, it's not simple and fast. It's terrible.

Hmm, I notice lots of mixed opinions there. Even the ign's review didn't sound too harsh to me. Actually I felt like it was writen by someone who liked gothic games. Nonetheless I'm waiting eagerly to play it myself. I hope the series hasn't lost too much flavour. After reading those reviews 7 or 8 sounds quite fair. Overall I'd say that it sounds like a fun game, but not an instant classic like gothic 1 or gothic 2.

"Even the outdoor environments suffer from an odd pop-up effect that makes flora appear to bloom as one approaches it." I was really hoping they would have fixed that, it's such a stupid effect that serves absolutely no purpose.

Is the usual crap I can discard (the guy just wanted Fable or KoA at best )
Its pretty much what I have seen from that site the other 3-4 times I bothered to read reviews there… (edit they did give #1 a fair 80% from what I am seeing though: different reviewer)

The IGN review really disturbs me. Not only is it written by someone who appears to know what they're taking about (for a change), but it seems PB dropped the ball on their core strength: exploration. Shudder.

Originally Posted by JonNik
Is the usual crap I can discard (the guy just wanted Fable or KoA at best )
Its pretty much what I have seen from that site the other 3-4 times I bothered to read reviews there… (edit they did give #1 a fair 80% from what I am seeing though: different reviewer)

A few Gothics ago I would have said PB were the top RPG studio, but I think they've slipped back a little. CDProjekt and Bethesda seem to be the top tier now, albeit with different approaches, Bioware are open to debate, while PB and whoever did Two Worlds sort of languish on the B (or sometimes C) team. I don't think anyone would object to, say wooden animations if the quests and exploration were good. But if those things are average, well… why do we love PB again? I think I might prefer Larian too to be honest.

Originally Posted by vurt
"Even the outdoor environments suffer from an odd pop-up effect that makes flora appear to bloom as one approaches it." I was really hoping they would have fixed that, it's such a stupid effect that serves absolutely no purpose.

Could be caused by the engine. I have seen it on Star Wars Battlefront I.

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)